Making Accessible Compliance Visible for 1000+ Developers

Written By Brian J. Crowley

Situation

Allstate had a critical internal problem: developers and product managers lacked clear visibility into whether their code met production readiness standards, particularly WCAG accessibility requirements. The existing Compliance Buddy tool was confusing and difficult to navigate, creating friction in the development workflow and potentially allowing non-compliant code to reach production. Internal teams needed an intuitive way to quickly assess code compliance status across multiple repositories and environments.

Task

Redesign the Compliance Buddy dashboard to provide clear, actionable insights for internal developers and PMs, enabling them to:

  • Quickly determine if code is ready for production deployment

  • Understand WCAG accessibility compliance status at a glance

  • Navigate between repositories and environments efficiently

  • Identify and resolve compliance issues before deployment

Action

User Research & Problem Analysis

  • Conducted interviews with internal developers, PMs, and DevOps teams to understand current pain points

  • Analyzed existing dashboard usage patterns and identified key decision-making moments

  • Mapped user workflows from code commit to production deployment

Information Architecture Redesign

  • Simplified navigation structure to prioritize most critical compliance information

  • Created clear visual hierarchy distinguishing between warnings (deployable) and failures (blocking)

  • Organized data by repository and environment for logical developer mental models

Visual Design System

  • Implemented consistent color coding: Pass (green), Warnings (yellow), Fail (red)

  • Designed clear status indicators with prominent "Can I push to Production?" messaging

  • Created scannable layouts with appropriate information density for rapid decision-making

Key Interface Improvements

  • Dashboard Overview: Centralized view of all repositories with at-a-glance compliance status

  • Repository Detail Views: Environment-specific artifact information with clear deployment readiness

  • Vulnerability Management: Organized security scan results with severity indicators and remediation guidance

  • Accessibility Focus: Prominent WCAG compliance indicators and accessibility-specific failure explanations

Iterative Testing & Refinement

  • Conducted usability testing sessions with target users

  • Refined information presentation based on real-world usage scenarios

  • Optimized for common developer workflows and decision points

Result

Improved Developer Experience

  • Reduced time to assess production readiness from minutes to seconds

  • Eliminated confusion about deployment status across different environments

  • Created clear pathways for resolving compliance issues

Enhanced Accessibility Compliance

  • Made WCAG standards more visible and actionable in the development process

  • Provided clear guidance on accessibility failures and remediation steps

  • Integrated accessibility checks seamlessly into existing DevOps workflows

Organizational Impact

  • Decreased production deployment delays caused by compliance confusion

  • Improved code quality through proactive compliance checking

  • Established scalable design patterns for future compliance tools

Measurable Outcomes

  • Increased developer adoption and engagement with compliance processes

  • Faster identification and resolution of accessibility issues

  • More consistent adherence to WCAG standards across development teams

The redesigned Compliance Buddy transformed compliance from a frustrating bottleneck into an integrated part of Allstate's development workflow, empowering teams to ship accessible, production-ready code with confidence.

Brian J. Crowley
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